Take Down! The Pirate Ganzack! is a One Piece OVA premiered during the 1998 Jump Super Anime Tour. It was the first crack at an anime for the series, being produced by Production I.G rather than Toei who would handle the anime from then onward.
The story is set in a Broad Strokes version of the early East Blue, with the Strawhats consisting of Luffy, Zoro and Nami. As they're making their way across East Blue, their dinghy is suddenly attacked by a Sea King and the trio is separated. Luffy ends up washed ashore on an island where he meets a young girl in a mini-suit of armor named Medeka trying to fight some pirates. Once Luffy takes care of them for her, she explains their island has been taken over by a pirate name Ganzack who has enslaved the citizens to make a weapon for him with the intent to take over the Grand Line. Medaka coaxes Luffy to attack him since Ganzack likewise has taken near all the island's food for himself. But Ganzack naturally isn't a pushover and a tough battle ensues for our fledgling pirate crew.
Tropes:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Ganzack has a Plesiosaur sea king at his disposal. Not surprisingly it's the creature that attacks the trio at the start.
- Broad Strokes: Apart from using the first three Strawhats, the plot doesn't really reference or contradict any part of the manga (except the tiny matter of the Strawhats traveling in only one boat, when in the manga Nami had her own that she'd conned out of the Buggy pirates).
- Composite Character: Ganzack has elements of Buggy's ego and an attack on Luffy's straw hat, Don Krieg's reliance on a powered armor filled up with weapons and a dream to be the Pirate King, and Arlong's treating other people as livestock as well as control over a Sea King. The strange part is that with Ganzack having been designed by Oda himself, he predates Krieg and Arlong in the manga thanks to the OVA being released while the Syrup Village Arc was still underway.
- Darker and Edgier: Only by nature of coming out before things like the Arlong Park arc, this OVA was inherently darker than the content in the manga up to the point of its release thanks to Ganzack being a relatively immoral antagonist treating the islanders like livestock for his good living and willing to murder them all for daring to rebel. Notably, as far as the film's novelization is considered, Ganzack is also Killed Off for Real in the climax for a series that would take well over a decade after the OVA to actually kill anyone in the present outside of a flashback.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Luffy's stretching sounds were much more realistic to that of how real rubber would be when pulled.
- Fake Defector: Nami pretends to have thrown in with Ganzack when Luffy and Zoro are captured. But naturally, she's just playing him to get his treasure and banking on Luffy and Zoro to take Ganzack out.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Ganzack was developing a missile weapon which he could launch from his ship. He tries using it to destroy the island, only for Luffy to send Ganzack flying into the incoming missile, destroying it and finishing off Ganzack in the process.
- Off with His Head!: In the climax, Ganzack attempts to behead Luffy but gets Medaka instead who jumps in front of the swipe. Luckily she ducked her head in her armor.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: A subversion: Luffy actually kills Ganzack by punching him towards his own missile he launched, marking the first time he does so in a non-canon OVA.
